The Center for Church Music, on the campus of Concordia University Chicago, provides ongoing research and educational resources in Lutheran church music.
The Center for Church Music was dedicated on October 18, 2010 and is presently located in the Klinck Memorial Library on the campus of Concordia University Chicago. Since Barry L. Bobb began work for the Center in late 2012, it has evolved into a dynamic initiative dedicated to promoting and preserving the great heritage of Lutheran church music.
The Center came into being as the result of two extraordinary gifts to the University from Dr. Carl and Noël Schalk and the family of the late Dr. Richard Hillert.
To help establish the Center, Richard and Gloria Hillert have gifted the University with permanent loan of manuscripts and published compositions by Richard Hillert, distinguished professor of emeritus of music at Concordia. A noted Lutheran composer, Hillert is probably best known for his “Holy Communion, Setting 1” including “Worthy Is Christ,” the canticle known as “This is the feast.”
The manuscripts of Carl Schalk are also housed at the Center, along with his entire collection of 530 Lutheran hymnals in English, German, Norwegian and Swedish published in the United States and Pennsylvania colony as early as 1786; in Germany between 1726 and 1787; and in Australia since 1936. In includes the first editions from the presses of important early American printers and publishers including Christopher Sauer, Peter Leibert and Michael Billmeyer.
The Center serves as a repository for special collections and works by other influential Christian church musicians, including significant contributions by American Lutherans.
As a locus for the study of church music, the Center will also disseminate papers and monographs for conferences such as CUC’s annual Vi Messerli Lectures in Church Music, and is producing a series of video interviews, "Profiles in American Lutheran Church Music," that will be posted to its web site, cuchicago.edu/centerforchurchmusic.
FOUNDATIONAL STATEMENTS
The work of the Center for Church Music is based on the following convictions:
• Worship is the center of the Church’s life. It is what the church is, a worshiping community, and from that glowing center flows all aspects of the Church’s life and mission.
• For Lutherans worship is centered in Word and Sacrament. Lutherans celebrate Holy Communion each Sunday and festival, in additional providing regular occasion for the observance of historic non-Eucharistic worship centered in readings from Scripture, psalms, prayers, and hymns and canticles.
• Lutherans stand unapologetically in the liturgical tradition of the Church. As such its worship is shaped by the church year, appointed readings, the singing of psalms, and a basic core of hymnody. Lutheran worship is characterized by neither faddishness or novelty but values stability and continuity with the historic church.
• Music in Lutheran worship is a vehicle for the proclamation of the good news of the Gospel and the praise of God. God is praised when the Gospel is proclaimed, and when the Gospel is proclaimed that is the way God is rightly praised.
• Congregational song in liturgy and hymns is the central focus of music in Lutheran worship. A sung liturgy and vibrant congregational singing are the norm in Lutheran worship. At the same time Lutheran worship welcomes the contribution of organ, choirs, and instruments, and the work of composers as they are centered in the liturgy and congregational song.
The Center for Church Music is dedicated to preserving, supporting and nurturing the great musical heritage of the Lutheran church through print and video initiatives, by making available for study historic hymnals and the manuscripts of some of the church's leading modern-day composers, and by fostering closer community among Lutheran church musicians worldwide.
